Leisure Activity Status, Outcome, and Causal Attribution: A Hypothesized Interaction Effect

This study manipulated the status, outcome, and attributions for selves and others, with males and females (N 80), to see if there would be an influence on the causal attributions made for the performance of a novel game called Pommawanga. The attributions were made across four causal factors: ability, effort, task difficulty and luck. The analysis of variance used the group means for each of the experimental conditions to test three hypotheses: first, that leisure activity status would influence performance; second, that status would influence causal attributions made for performances by self and others; and third, that positive performance outcomes would be maximized and negative performance outcomes minimized through the use of causal attributions in relation to leisure activity status (the mini-max principle, Luginbuhl, Crowe and Kahan 1975). The results indicated that: (a) the level of status had no universal effect on performance outcome; (b) two levels of status for the activity yielded significant differences in the causal attributions for self and others in terms of ability and effort, and (c) there was evidence of the mini-max principle, as influenced by status, for the causal attribution effort and its use, as influenced by outcome, for the causal attributions ability and luck. The relevance of these data is discussed in terms of attribution theory, therapeutic recreation, handicapped populations, and the concept of leisure.